


and have a heart to grow

by mayachain



Series: birthday!verse [59]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Background Relationships, Birthday, Gen, Herbology, Neville's innate love of plants, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:08:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25607884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayachain/pseuds/mayachain
Summary: Four times Neville was astounded on his birthday.Or, July 30th - 1984, 2001, 2020
Relationships: Augusta Longbottom & Neville Longbottom, Neville Longbottom & plants, Neville Longbottom/Draco Malfoy
Series: birthday!verse [59]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/6020
Kudos: 14





	and have a heart to grow

** and have a heart to grow **

**July 30th, 1984**

“Now what is going on here?” little Neville asked. He could have sworn – he was convinced it was true – that until his hand touched the wintergarten greenhouse door there had been whispered yelling.

The tiny strawberry and elderberry bushes in their respective pots were ornamental. Gran had been adamant; they were there to look nice, not to produce anything edible. The grand winter gardens on the west side wing were another matter, but this one was _her_ space and meant to be free from anyone’s – her husband’s, Neville’s – gardening.

There was hardly enough sunlight at the right times for the strawberries to do anything. Just enough that Gran could enjoy the sunrise in here every morning.

And yet, when Neville looked, there were berries in the pot as well as berries growing on the elderberry vines. 

“That should not have happened,” Neville thought, elated and agitated all at once. Gran had plucked all berries only yesterday and put it off as a fluke. It was too cold! But here was proof: The yelling was proof, and Neville hoped like hell he could get Grandfather to explain how it had happened.

The tiny bushes had turned the growing of berries into a _competition._

**July 30th, 2001**

The Wiggentree had been speaking to him ever since he’d been a small child. A susurrus carried on by the wind, a tinkering of bells when the seasonal change cast off its petals, a creaking when Neville’s attention had been wandering for too long.

This was new, however, and Neville was at a loss to explain what it meant. A sound that could only be described as a yawn. No other signs Neville could read by heart were giving him any clue, and he had found zilch, nada, in his twenty-three tomes on Wiggentree literature. 

Wiggentrees were attuned to humans, he knew it. But Neville himself – and to the best of Neville’s diagnostic, the blasted tree – were in perfect health. So what was wrong?

Neville went into the house for some tea and a distraction. He was halfway through the second scone when the realization hit.

‘Gran,’ he thought. ‘Gran,’ dismayed. The witch who’d lived on this land for nearly a century, who was still spry as a raptor chick whenever Neville saw her –

It was Gran who wasn’t getting enough sleep.

**July 30th, 2020**

It was one of the first Sparkling Amaryllises that Aunt Enid had ever brought. Neville had loved it for decades, had talked Gran's ears off about its mesmerizing bloom every spring, but this year there had so far been several months of nothing. No reaction at all to nutrients, water, Draco’s grandmother’s special tea or natural rain.

It had rejected every careful relocation Neville had performed; even – or so he had thought – this last one into his nursery greenhouse. 

Neville had been thinking about giving the old-timer up, almost convinced that it was time to uproot the venerable plant entirely and shred its remains into fertilizer. This, however, was proof that the root was still intact, against all odds, still very much alive. 

The Sparkling Amaryllis refused to sprout any petals but the two leaves that had sprung up climbed higher by the minute.

“All-right then,” he murmured, stroking a finger along the length of the sword-like outgrowth, “let’s fetch you a few ropes and then you can go on providing shade for the little ones.”

.


End file.
